Lioness
by existing
Summary: How can you deny the one thing you want above all?


The door opened with a slam. In an instinctual reaction, Severus stood up from his grading, wand in hand, before realizing that it was Hermione Granger striding into his office. Her expression was fierce as she spelled the door closed. _Colloportus._ He clenched his hands into fists.

Severus Snape would be lying if he said he hadn't noticed her, thought about her; the war had changed her. It had changed all of them. The problems of the students and House points had become insignificant, and somewhere in all of that mess, Hermione Granger had ceased to be irritating. She had grown into what he couldn't deny as being an intelligent and confident young woman. He felt ill every time she came unbidden into his mind. He was an old, perverted, sick man for thinking about her, wanting all of her. Severus' favourite pastime, self-loathing, threatened to destroy him, as it always did. What was she doing here, in the office of the _Dungeon Bat, _standing all pretty in her uniform?

It wasn't like he didn't know what the students thought of him.

Suddenly, she strode closer to him, still having not said a word. The spy's sharp mind compartmentalized her every movement. He detected uncertainty and resolve, and he couldn't make any sense of it through the roar of his confused thoughts. _What is she doing? Surely she cannot be…_

Those thoughts were interrupted as she drew closer, and even closer, until she was standing directly in front of him. Tilting her head up to look straight into his eyes, she stated so clearly that he had no way of misinterpreting her intentions, "I want you. I've seen you, the way you look at me."

The world seemed to tilt on its axis.

"Miss Granger, this is highly inappropriate! I am a teacher, and you are my student. I suggest you leave my office_ immediately_." His heart thudded in his chest. _How does she know?_

"So you're older. What does it matter? I want this. I'm an adult. There are no rules for two consenting adults, _Severus. _Who cares about the rules when you or I could be dead any day now-"

Severus snarled in an attempt to ward her off. This was dangerous territory, and if she kept pushing... "Don't be stupid, Granger. Get out."

With his words, she seemed to collapse, to fold in on herself. "Please, sir, please, I l-"

He barked out a laugh. "You what? You're hardly an adult, what do you know of love, Granger?" His face twisted in the memory of his past. What could she know? She was eighteen, young and innocent and idealistic. She knew nothing of loss or desire, not the way that he knew them, so intimately well.

"I need this, I need you!" To his dismay, he found tears glittering in the corners of her eyes. And then she did the unthinkable: she grabbed the front of his robes and pulled him close. He stood stiff, the predator and his unthinkably consenting prey, begging to be defiled.

The tension was deafening, his heart beating heavily in his chest. He thought he might explode from the sheer want that was spreading throughout his body. _She's right there for the taking and she wants it, she wants you!_ Every nerve screamed at him to reach out and touch her, to capture her fire, take it for himself. But he couldn't move, he couldn't breathe: the words of denial and vitriol that usually flowed so freely seemed stuck in his throat.

The silence was unbearable.

A whisper: "Severus, please."

Those would always be the words of Severus Snape's undoing.

His eyes hardening, Severus pushed forward urgently, backing her into the wall. He took her face in his hands, and he kissed her. It was rough and demanding, without consideration of her pleasure or consent. That which was unsaid spun between them both, a frenzied storm of repressed emotion. All teeth and breath, the kiss grew heated and increasingly passionate. His hands strayed from her face, his arm snaking around her torso, the other bracing himself against the wall. Her moan of longing and _Severus_ brought him to a halt. Drawing away with a rugged gasp, he struggled out, "No!"

_What have I done?_

In a moment, he sprung away as if hexed, his arms falling to his side as he stared at her with the horror of realization.

Hermione Granger's eyes were brown and pleading, desperate like all of the women he'd had to kill with one slash of his wand and a gleefully cast curse. Only this time, his student's lips were swollen from _his _actions, her eyelids heavy from desire for _him. _It was _all because of him, everything was wrong because of him and he needed to fix it, he needed to fix it before it all fell apart…_

Reining in his tumultuous thoughts, he schooled his expression into one of anger. He was painfully pleased to find that he hadn't lost his voice, the harshness of his words echoed by the loss of his usual smooth tones, replaced instead by sandpaper.

"Leave, girl. Run while you still can. I will destroy you. I break what I touch, Granger."

She just _kept looking at him_, and he knew that she wasn't going to leave; she was going to fight back, the stupid, foolhardy Gryffindor that she was. Couldn't she see with those righteous lioness eyes that he couldn't do this, couldn't she see that he wasn't deserving of someone like her?

Without knowing what else to do, he gathered all his fear and hatred – he thought of Potter, Albus, the Dark Lord. The three hated masters of his world – and spat it all out in the only way that would stop this before it all went too far: "You think that your being a show off know-it-all makes you special in my eyes? You are wrong! You are silly and childish and your obsession with me is, frankly, pathetic. You come in here, thinking yourself to have some kind of connection with me, but you know _nothing_. Go back to your teenage boys and stop playing with men; you are _nothing_ to me. I can never care for you; I can never love you; it will _never _be you," he spat.

He watched her crumple before his eyes.

Knowing he would not be able to maintain his composure for long, he hurriedly strode away to his chambers, heart heavy and _angry,_ knowing he could never repair the damage done. He'd had a chance, but he couldn't take it, because god_dammit_ the Dark Lord was there with him, watching him, controlling him. He was a marionette manipulated by multiple masters, and his only purpose was to die serving them all.

He poured himself a Firewhiskey, and then another, and another.

None of the students could figure out a reason why consummate Gryffindor Granger was running blindly through the Slytherin dungeons; they were quick to speculate that perhaps Snape had refused to give her more than an Exceeds Expectations on an essay. After all, there was a reason why no Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and especially not a Gryffindor ever took advantage of his office hours.

Hermione Granger was infinitely grateful that nobody was around when her blurred vision caused her to trip. Sinking to the ground with her back to the wall, she stayed until she could cry no more for Severus Snape's soul or her own.


End file.
